Several important issues need to be examined in projects that explicitly seek to reduce the food insecurity of poor rural households. Which of these issues should receive attention in a given project is a question whose response varies according to the particular context of the project concerned.

The analytical model for examining food security conditions at the household level is a way of organizing in a simple but comprehensive fashion the issues to be considered in an HFS analysis. It also helps identify the types of data that would need to be collected to shed light on these issues in the context of a particular study or programming or project design, or for monitoring and evaluation. The model is generic in form and content. It does not say which conditions or change in conditions would be the most important in a given situation, thus allowing a dynamic approach to examining a given reality and serving as a reminder of the range of factors – or groups of factors – that may be of importance.⁶

In most IFAD-funded investment projects, socio-economic studies are now undertaken prior to the design of the project. Such studies encompass information on the potential resource base, agricultural production, income-earning activities, local institutions (especially credit institutions), and community organization and participation. Data on household food security conditions can be collected as an integral part of such studies, by making use of the base information and adding new information to help answer specific questions relative to the adequacy, stability and sustainability of the household food supply within changing food systems. The HFS analytical tool will help organize the information needed in a logical structure of conditioning factors and help relate them to one another in the final analysis.

For example, probing into food adequacy and the immediate conditioning factors determining the adequacy of the household food supply (in potential dietary/nutritional terms this includes its safeness) would imply asking, e.g.:

• What is the adequacy of the household food resource base in terms of quantity, diversity?
• What are the measures attempted by the households to improve this base through food handling, and how effective are they?
• What, if any, are the constraints these households face in both areas?
• What changes, if any, have taken place in the nature of the household food resource base, in quantity and diversity?

Observed instability of the household food base would lead to the following questions:

• What are the various procurement strategies (including income-earning activities) that households use?
• What is the significance of these strategies in allowing households to maintain a stable access to needed resources?
• Which social support patterns exist that may help households secure an adequate food base and tie them over during periods of temporary crises?
• What are typical coping strategies of households vis-à-vis short and long-term stress?

These issues are also important in assessing household vulnerability for use in beneficiary targeting, that is, identifying those households that lack adequate buffering mechanisms.

In the context of food and nutrition, the generation, control, management and allocation of the household resources are especially important with regard to women. Women are both producers and contributors to HFS, and at the same time reproducers and mediators of nutritional opportunities to household members. This raises a number of important questions:

• What are the existing patterns of decision-making for control of resources?
• Is there a potential conflict between demands on women’s resources, including their time, in their role as contributors to household food security and demands on their resources as care-givers vis-à-vis household members, particularly young children?
• Do women have to make trade-offs in their time allocation for these tasks?
• If so, are there possible repercussions on either sets of tasks in terms of decreased food access and/or insufficient care for the vulnerable members of the household?

Potential resources would basically apply to the agro-ecological potential, with the numerous critical issues entailed, regarding sustainability. These issues are at the core of IFAD’s everyday concern. From a nutritional perspective, the nature and sources of the food resources are important:

• Which natural resources are ultimately channelled into household food security (through home production or the market)?
• Is the potential food resource base sufficiently diverse in terms of types of foods that it will enable consumers to procure food that can fully satisfy dietary needs – nutritionally and culturally?

The questions suggested here, derived from the HFS analytical model, are just indications of what may need to be looked into. They reflect concerns emanating from different perspectives and entry points to household food security: agro-ecological, socio-economic and nutritional. HFS is a potentially forceful ‘meeting point’ between two major lines of objectives: (i) on the one hand, to optimize the processes related to agricultural production and natural resources and their transformation through socio-economic determinants into the ultimate availability and management, by the households, of these resources; and (ii) on the other hand, to optimize the potential of these resources to satisfy access to adequate food, dietary intake and nutrition for individual household members.

IFAD’s past experiences and strengths so far lie in enhancing the first set – making resources available. The nutrition perspective on HFS sets definite requirements as to the nature and use of the household resources and how this determines the nutritional and cultural adequacy of the household food resource base. Methodologically there are still gaps to be filled regarding the latter. Conventional nutrition indicators are either not sensitive for the purpose (nutrition status indicators) or too detailed and time consuming (dietary intake indicators). Rapid assessments of the household food base – its sources, how it is procured, how it is handled and its seasonality and sustainability (e.g., as can be shown with household food calendars) – must therefore be further developed and field tested.

When the full methodology is in hand, HFS analysis may be the most promising venture to date to help establish the connections between nutrition and agricultural development.

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6/ As the model is organized in the same way as the conceptual framework on the causes of malnutrition, it can be used in the same way. That is to say, it can guide a process of assessment and analysis of what causes the problem of household food insecurity, or - expressed in the positive way as chosen here - what is the precise character of the conditions necessary to achieve household food security.